


like this

by Batman



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Polyamory, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6194695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batman/pseuds/Batman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Bokuto and Kuroo showed Keiji how to use his hands, and one time they didn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fyolette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyolette/gifts).



> A PROMPT FILL. If I knew it's this much fun to write polyamory, however briefly, I would have indulged myself earlier. 
> 
> On a random note, I wish I'd started off with writing my author's notes in lapslock because I don't talk like this. Perhaps one day I will go back and change all of them.

Keiji is on the cusp of turning sixteen, always so much later than the rest of them. The touch of a ball’s lined surface is anything but foreign to him, just like the different ways in which Bokuto’s voice goes up and down. And yet, on some days, combinations of the two that he didn’t anticipate bring him clumsily to his knees, or stumbling and balancing on one foot, sucking in a breath and trying not to curse.

On one such occasion, Kuroo’s hand plays fulcrum at the small of Keiji’s back. He knows it’s Kuroo because of the laugh that accompanies Keiji leaning backwards precariously, and he can see the flutter of Kuroo’s red jacket on the edge of his vision.

Kuroo, all grace in the periphery of the court as Keiji has always seen him to be, has caught the ball in his other hand, still chuckling. ‘Back to the basics, Akaashi?’

Keiji clears his throat, straightens himself. He can’t choose between _I’m sorry_ and _thank you_ , so he doesn’t. ‘He caught me off-guard.’

‘Isn’t that the game?’ Before Keiji can answer, Kuroo’s hands are around his wrists, his grip light as the ball bounces to the floor. ‘The next time he pulls something like that, you just—’

The touch of a ball’s lined surface is anything but foreign to him, and then, the touch of someone’s hands anything but that. Keiji misses what Kuroo’s voice is saying in favour of seeing how he turns Keiji’s hands this way and that, raises them, lowers them. Kuroo’s fingers are long, steady for his seventeen years, the way Keiji perceives it too sharply for his almost-sixteen.

‘Like this,’ Kuroo says, then lets go. ‘He’s going to lose his shit if you do that.’

Keiji hums and nods, steps forward. He doesn’t turn back to look at Kuroo. The lights are bright on the floor, and the net his favourite thing in the world, second only to the boy behind it.

##  **—**

Koutarou confesses to him a year after he becomes Koutarou. Keiji is seventeen and had never considered anything outside reciprocation, and the nostalgia, already, of seeing Fukurodani’s hallways for the last time in uniform gives him the push he needs.

When he pulls away, Koutarou’s eyes are still closed, so he rises up again. And when he pulls away, Koutarou’s eyes are still closed, so he rises up again. When he pulls away, Koutarou’s eyes are still closed.

On their first real date, Koutarou brings the bike he bought the week before. Despite himself, Keiji finds his hands moving over the handlebars, the gas tank, the headlight.

‘Cool, right?’

‘Arguably,’ Keiji murmurs. ‘Can I take it, with my weight?’

‘Sure you can. Sit.’

Keiji knows how to ride bicycles, mopeds, even. These grips are still new to him, a little wide in his hands, the entire vehicle differently balanced from what he’s used to. Keiji takes a breath.

Then Koutarou is leaning in close, curling his hands over Keiji’s, twisting them just a little. The bike purrs, then growls. Koutarou’s breath is coffee and mint, and Keiji restrains himself.

‘Like this,’ Koutarou says, and strokes his thumb over Keiji’s. ‘Yeah?’

Keiji swallows, restrains himself, takes a breath. ‘Yes,’ he says.

##  **—**

For Koutarou’s twentieth, Keiji and Kuroo decide to make the dinner they’ve invited their friends to. For all this time that he has known Kuroo— almost as long as Koutarou— he is always learning new things about him. The misconception that he shouldn’t unsettles him somewhere he can’t point to; he lives with Koutarou, he doesn’t live with Kuroo. There are going to be dozens of things he doesn’t know about Kuroo— the way he likes to sleep, what songs he listens to at three in the morning, if he listens to songs at three in the morning when he is alone and not subjected to Koutarou’s familiar whims.

He is Koutarou’s best friend, and has never really been Keiji’s.

The onion he is chopping is taking too long to chop. For all his time in the kitchen, Keiji has never been as good with knives as he wants others to assume him to be. Something about his sense of pressure, his theory never reaching his hands. Kuroo, standing so close, is on his fourth.

Keiji looks at his hands without focus, letting them become a bronze blur against the white of the countertop. The sound of the knife on the chopping board is pleasant to his ears, and suddenly, standing in the kitchen at two in the afternoon with the autumn winds howling outside and Kuroo’s eyes on his task, Keiji has perhaps never been this much in love. With Koutarou, yes, always, and also with the motion of Kuroo’s skilful hands.

‘Hey,’ Kuroo says, stopping suddenly, knocking the back of his hand gently against Keiji’s. Keiji gulps and looks up, lips parted; standing in this kitchen at two in the afternoon with the autumn winds howling outside, he has perhaps never been this vulnerable. Kuroo’s face is too serious, a tired draw to his brows and lips, as if he knows too.

‘Like this,’ he says, nodding towards the knife. ‘Don’t lift the edge.’

Don’t lift the edge, Keiji thinks. Yes. Don’t lift the edge. He is on the cusp of nineteen, always so much later than the rest of them.

##  **—**

They’re watching a movie when it happens. The couch is more than large enough for three, and yet Koutarou is taking up most of the space. Keiji is curled against his armrest, inching closer to Koutarou’s warmth with every few minutes that pass. On Koutarou’s other side, Kuroo is leaning his head on his hand, looking like he doesn’t know what the movie is about every time Keiji cranes his neck to check on him.

‘Say,’ Koutarou says, still watching the screen, ‘don’t you two have something as well?’

Keiji doesn’t know what aspect of the situation to focus on, if he manages to focus at all: Koutarou’s voice almost disinterested in its casual tone, the way he knows Kuroo has frozen even if he can’t see, or the _as well_.

There is silence in which Keiji and Kuroo slowly, slowly uncurl themselves from their positions. There’s a moment, hilarious, almost, where Koutarou finally turns to look at both of them in turns while Keiji knows that Kuroo’s gaze, like his own, is fixed on the carpet.

Then Koutarou bursts out laughing. It’s not loud or boisterous or over-compensating, it’s not nervous or high or derisive. It’s pure Koutarou, low, slow, sweet. ‘I thought so,’ he says.

Kuroo, Keiji realises, has as much of a handle on Koutarou as he himself does, but in domains different to this one— because while Keiji is slowly letting the rush of implication wash over his body, Kuroo is still frozen in place, saying ‘And now?’ in a small, small voice.

Keiji does nothing because he knows Koutarou will. And he does. He takes Keiji’s hand and pulls on it, and he takes Kuroo’s hand and pulls on it, until their fingers are brushing against each other on his knees. Keiji won’t move until Kuroo does, and Kuroo won’t move until Koutarou speaks.

Then Koutarou speaks.

‘Like this,’ he says, putting his own hand over theirs, and Keiji feels Kuroo’s fingers twitch with the shock. ‘It’s not that complicated.’

There is a beat of inhales, and then Kuroo is laughing, bringing his arm up to hide his face in the crook of his elbow. Keiji’s comprehension glides over Koutarou talking about house rules and such, _so Friday is pizza night_ and _if you touch Keiji’s shampoo he will literally skin you_ , and comes to a rest when Koutarou brings Kuroo’s hand up to his lips and smiles over his fingertips, whispers _it’s going to be so good, I promise_.

Kuroo still goes home at the end of the night, but he leans down at the door. When he pulls away, Keiji doesn’t open his eyes, so he leans down again. And when he pulls away, Keiji doesn’t open his eyes, so he leans down again. When he pulls away, Keiji doesn’t open his eyes. In his head he goes back over the years; the motion-stopping strength in the blade of Kuroo’s hand, sharp on the small of his back, and Koutarou behind the net, bright and burning and larger than life.

##  **—**

Keiji is twenty one. The bed gives as much as ever under his knees, but the moonlight fragments itself over so much more skin.

Below him, Tetsurou is lying on his back, head high on the pillows and lips closed around his emotion. His eyes are on Keiji now, then on Koutarou, then on Keiji again, staying there, his hands curling into the sheets with all the questions he won’t ask.

Behind him, Koutarou’s chest is a furnace, his lips hot and open wide on Keiji’s shoulder, thighs warm and strong against the backs of Keiji’s own. His voice is like the growl of his bike, and his fingers are dancing over Keiji’s arms.

Keiji stills his hands and brings them forward, fits them around the grips of his hipbones. They rest there like twin stretches of the sun, and they are anything but foreign to Keiji. Then he bends just a little and takes Kuroo’s fists, opening them and guiding them to his waist. Tetsurou's thumbs stroke up to the lowest of his ribs, and Koutarou’s hands are anything but foreign to Keiji’s, and then Tetsurou's are anything but that.

Keiji closes his eyes and spreads his hands over theirs.

Like this, he says, and exhales.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/soldierpoetking) and [Tumblr](http://sturlsons.tumblr.com). 
> 
> STAY GOOD CHILDREN STAY STRONG AGAINST THE GIBOULÉES DE MARS. (I just googled that, turns out it's called April showers in english. I didn't know that's what April showers meant.)


End file.
